Benedict Jacka

Website Mysteries

Posted on January 24, 2014 by Benedict

Running a website can be weird.

I do all the day-to-day maintenance of this site myself – a friend of mine designed the layout, but the posts and any additions to the pages are all written by me. Generally, it’s worked pretty well, and it mostly just does its job in the background without me needing to keep fixing things. But while I don’t really run into any problems administering the site, I keep tabs on the access stats via a log file analyser, and some of the stuff I find out in the process just makes me scratch my head.

For instance, if anyone tried to guess the most common location that people access this website from, they’d probably guess the USA, and they’d be right. But if they tried to guess the second, third, and fourth countries on the list, they’d almost certainly be way off. It turns out that said countries are China, Thailand, and France, respectively. I have no idea why, but I’m guessing it involves spambots.

Speaking of spambots, before running this site, I never realised just how heavily websites in general get attacked. I haven’t calculated exactly how many spam comments I get per day, but the amount of spam comments this site gets per week is greater than the number of human-generated comments that that this site has had in the past two years. The spam filter catches over 99.9% of them, but the sheer number means that some still get through. (On which subject, don’t put links in your comments. The spam filter does its best, but URLs of any kind in a comment are a major feature of spam mail and . . . well, if your comment isn’t getting posted, that might be why.)

Every now and then, though, you get something that’s just bizarre.

In this case, it’s one of the Encyclopaedia articles I wrote the best part of a year ago, Advanced Divination (Part Three). It’s a fairly standard page, right? Nothing really out of the ordinary. Definitely nothing to make it stand out from all the other posts and articles I’ve written.

Yet for some reason, that one page is viewed more than any other page on this website. In fact, that one article’s been viewed more than all the other sixty Encylopaedia articles put together. Just in the first three weeks of this month alone, it’s had tens of thousands of page views, and for the life of me I have absolutely no idea why. And along with the views comes the spam – I finally turned off comments on that entry just because that page alone was getting triple-digit numbers of spam comments on a daily basis.

I honestly can’t figure out why that page would be accessed more than every other one. I can’t think of any legitimate reason for people to be doing this, so my best guess is that a bunch of bots have locked onto it and are loading and reloading it over and over again, but I have no clue why.

But if any of you guys have any theories, I’d love to hear them.

Posted in News | 7 Comments

Encyclopaedia Arcana #61: Sound Magic

Posted on January 17, 2014 by Benedict

An odd hybrid of the three families, sound mages don’t fit neatly into any of the standard categories. They have some of the physical spells of elementalists and some of the more subtle abilities of universalists, yet personality-wise the mages they have most in common with are living ones.

Mockingbird

The most basic spell of sound magic is sound generation. Even novices can put on an impressive ventriloquism act, and sound mages of journeyman rank and higher can easily replicate any voice, noise, or sound effect they’ve ever heard. Giving the sound a convincing ‘feel’ does require a certain level of skill, but it’s a skill sound mages are generally both motivated and naturally inclined to learn. As a side effect of this they tend to be talented musicians and verbal performers outside of their magic, too, although it’s probably more accurate to say that both their magical and nonmagical abilities feed into each other.

In addition to producing sound, mages of this type are very good at detecting it. Even before they develop their magic, one of the telltale signs of a latent sound mage is exceptionally good hearing. Once they start training in earnest, it goes from ‘exceptional’ to ‘supernatural’ – a sound mage can usually figure out your sex, age, nationality, and rough height and weight through a closed door. More skilled sound mages develop this into outright echolocation, allowing them to aurally map an area without even opening their eyes.

Sound magic is also useful for analysing speech. By picking up on tonal changes and voice stress, a sound mage can easily read a speaker’s emotional state, and can usually make a pretty good guess as to whether said person is being honest. Sound mages make effective interrogators, with the additional benefit that they don’t even need to be the ones asking the questions; as long as they can hear the answers, that’s all they need.

Despite its name, sound magic doesn’t require audible sound to function: vibration through almost any medium is enough.

Sound and Fury

Sound magic can also be used as a weapon. At a high enough volume, sound spells can inflict pain or deafen; against inanimate objects, if tuned to the right frequency, they can set up vibrations that crack or shatter. More subtly, sound spells delivered at a very high or very low pitch can be hard to detect, yet still have a variety of unpleasant effects upon living creatures.

However, sound mages are generally not considered battle-mages, for several good reasons. Firstly, while sound magic attacks might be spectacular, they aren’t all that efficient. The nature of sound makes it difficult to focus, meaning that while sound attacks might have a lot of energy, most of that energy usually doesn’t go where it’s wanted. Secondly, while sound spells make for versatile weapons, they don’t necessarily make for effective ones. A sound mage might be able to incapacitate a target in a dozen ways, but none would be guaranteed to work and all would take time. A fire mage, on the other hand, only really has one way of dealing with a problem, namely burning it – but not only can they do that a lot faster than a sound mage, it’s much easier to defend yourself against a subtle ultrasonic attack than it is to deal with someone just dumping a ton of heat on top of where you’re standing.

Finally, while sound magic has a variety of offensive spells, it has almost no defensive ones. High-volume sound waves and sympathetic vibrations might mess up a person or a building, but they don’t do much to stop a fireball or a bullet. For these reasons, sound mages usually stay out of fights.

Singing in the Rain

Sound mages are emotional and sensitive. Both mages or normals tend to find them attractive, but while other people might want to be close to a sound mage, the sound mage isn’t necessarily going to reciprocate the feeling. The core of a sound mage’s personality is introverted rather than extroverted, and they usually have few close friends. Their talents make them popular, but they’re likely to be alone even in a crowd.

It’s rare for a sound mage to become involved in the political struggles of Light and Dark mages. Most have little interest in power, and are more likely to make lives for themselves as artists or performers. This is not without its dangers, however – while detachment from mage politics gives some limited protection against the power games of the magical world, it doesn’t prevent mages from taking an interest for other reasons. Attraction can easily become a desire to possess.

Posted in Encyclopaedia Arcana | 1 Comment

New Year, New Book

Posted on January 10, 2014 by Benedict

And it’s 2014. Happy New Year!

With the new year ticking round, the big news for me is that I’ve started the next book in the Alex Verus series, number 6. (Yes, there are going to be at least three more Alex Verus books after Chosen. In case you missed the news, here’s the post.)

Alex Verus #6 had a bit of a delayed start – I’d originally been hoping to have begun two months ago, but the time I’d scheduled in for working on the new book was taken up by the extensive revisions to Alex Verus #5, Hidden. Still, those are all done and dusted now, and my publisher’s happy with Hidden version 2.1, so I can quit worrying about it and focus on number 6.

One thing that’s worked out a little differently this time round is that I’ve ended up planning out the book a lot less extensively. For Taken, Chosen, and Hidden, I had the first third of each book plotted out before I even started writing. This time, for whatever reason, it just hasn’t worked out that way, and despite being nearly ten pages into the new book I only have the vaguest idea of what’s going to happen. The funny thing is, this is actually much closer to how things were when I started the series – back when I began Fated, I really didn’t know where the book was going or how long it’d be. It does mean I have to think on my feet a lot more, but in a weird way it feels a bit like going back to my roots.

Planning or no planning, though, the book’s going well, and if all keeps to schedule it should be finished by summer and released some time next year – exactly when is anybody’s guess, but Hidden is coming out in September, so number 6 should be out no more than a year after that (and hopefully a little less). We’ll see how it goes!

Posted in News | 2 Comments

Ask Luna #23

Posted on January 3, 2014 by Benedict

From: john

How do mages control magical creatures

Mind and charm magic and binding rituals.

From: Ted

Hi Luna,

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to expertly set up this “Ask Luna”, and for your never-ending patience in responding to the seemingly endless questions we normal people bombard you with. Hopefully that little bit of appreciation and flattery will entice you to answer some of these questions I’ve been holding onto forever, and I apologize if they get long. First of all, how do Light mages know who the Dark mages are, and how do the Light mages keep the Dark mages out of the council? Couldn’t a Dark mage just say that they were a Light mage, or is there some list of all Light mages somewhere? I’m just thinking that since it seems like a lot of Dark mages don’t really advertise their history, they should be able to become part of the Light council without anyone knowing the difference, as long as they acted the part and made some effort toward the politics. And a hopefully quicker last two questions: did you ever find out if the enchantress that you grazed with your curse and that chick that blasted you after you beat her dueling ever got what was coming to them? If so, what happened?

Flattery is always appreciated. Definitely makes me much more likely to answer.

Light mages don’t necessarily know who all the Dark mages are, and there isn’t a register of all the Dark mages. There IS a register of the Light mages, though, and you need to be on the register to join the Council, so that’s how it works. It’s not “you can’t join if you’re a Dark mage”, it’s “you’re only allowed to join if you’re in the club”. But you’re right that they don’t necessarily know that much about who is and isn’t a Dark mage – there’s a blurry line between independent and Dark ones, and the real hardliners on the Council don’t see much of a difference anyway.

As for THOSE two . . . ugh. As far as I know Meredith hasn’t gotten anything like what she deserves, but Natasha did get some delayed payback eventually. After what happened in Fountain Reach Alex had a talk with her master, and ever since then Natasha’s been avoiding me like her life depended on it. That probably would have been the end of it, except that even after everything that had happened she was dumb enough to think it was a good idea to keep trying to bully Anne in her spare time. Eventually she pushed Anne a bit too far, and . . . yeah. Wish I’d been there to see it.

From: Gordon

Hi Luna,

How is Alex viewed overall in the magical community these days? He’s a diviner, but he came up on top or at least survived several major incidents now. It sounds like people taking more notice of him these days, but does the community for the most part still kind of see him as an underdog or is his reputation overcoming that, for better or worse?

More specifically, how do the adepts and sensitives view him now, especially after the Nightstalkers incident? Is there a noticeable drop in the number that stops by the shop for help/advice?

I’d say his reputation’s gone up amongst mages and down amongst adepts, for pretty much the reasons you’ve already guessed. So he gets more apprentices stopping by his shop, and more mages coming with job offers or wanting to trade, but there’s been a definite drop-off in the number of adepts who stop by.

There are still a few mages who don’t take him seriously, but a lot fewer than there used to be. The weird thing is that it actually rubs off on me. I get treated with WAY more respect in the apprentice program than I used to. In my first year I kept getting bitchy comments from other apprentices about how I wasn’t a ‘real’ mage. Then the thing with the Nightstalkers happened, and all of a sudden they shut up real fast. Kind of an extreme way to do it, but whatever works I guess.

From: Dave K

Hi Luna. Big fan of Alex. Quick question for you. Do you know if it’s better for Alex to either purchase the audio book or read his novels in Ebook/paper format?

Thanks much!

Ebook, I think. Paper and audio books have much lower rates. Glad you like ‘em.

Posted in Ask Luna | 1 Comment

Merry Christmas!

Posted on December 27, 2013 by Benedict

. . . and a happy New Year from everyone in the Alex Verus world. Hope you’ve had fun with their adventures so far, and here’s to more to come in 2014!

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment

Alex Verus Audio Books!

Posted on December 20, 2013 by Benedict

I get a lot of questions via this website, and far and away the most common one is ‘when are the audio books coming out?’ Up until now my answer’s always been ‘no idea’, and I’ve given that same answer enough times that I was seriously considering putting a FAQ on the site for the sole reason of letting people know that I haven’t got any news for them about audio books.

At least, until now!

The first four Alex Verus novels are going to be published in the US in audiobook format by Tantor, and very soon in fact: they’ll be coming out over the next two months. Release dates are as follows:

Fated: 24th December 2013
Cursed: 6th January 2014
Taken: 27th January 2014
Chosen: 2nd February 2014

Tantor are also running a giveaway of the Fated audio on Goodreads, and they’ve got five CDs to hand out: you can find it here.

Oh, and in other news, Fated is getting another US reprinting, which is always nice.

Posted in News | 11 Comments

Hidden cover is out!

Posted on December 13, 2013 by Benedict

The UK cover for Hidden has just been released! Take a look:

The release date has finally been confirmed, too: it’ll be coming out September 2014. As usual, I’ll post the first chapter here on this site a couple of months or so before release.

I like the cover for this one. The artist included a couple of little details that reference some new things that get introduced in the story. Pity you can’t read it yet . . . though I guess before that can happen I really need to finish editing it!

Posted in News | 1 Comment

Ask Luna #22

Posted on December 6, 2013 by Benedict

From: drizztmajere

Hello Luna,
I saw you answer a question about whether or not alex is considered an adept or a mage and i was curious about spells. Most wizards find a mentor and copy their spells but it seems alex mostly had to learn on his own so i was curious if he is still in the process of developing other spells for himself or did he give up?

Alex had to learn the very basics of his magic on his own, but once he left school he had a mentor. Very definitely had a mentor. I get the impression lessons went fast, too, even if not all of them was good. After that was over, I think he mostly developed his divination magic by learning from other diviners rather than working it out from scratch.

From: Lee

Hi Luna, I was wondering, is there such a thing as a fiction mage? If so what sort of things could they do with there magic, could they use the friction to use heat or kinetic magic?

I’m going to guess you meant ‘friction’ not ‘fiction’, though that would be a pretty cool power too.

I’m kind of hazy on the exact definition of friction to be honest – is it force, or heat, or something like that? Whichever, there are a few different magic types that can do something similar. Fire mages can do the heat-generating part, force mages can do the making-something-move-or-not part, and earth mages can make solid objects stick fairly well, as long as they’re made of the right stuff. I’ve never met a mage who specialises in friction, but I think I’ve heard about a couple of recognised adept powers that do use friction or something like it in a fairly specific way.

From: drizztmajere

Hi Luna,
I was curious about Arachne’s ability. She has made you a focus and various aides for Verus in the pass so i was wondering if it is possible for her to create something that would allow a non gater to operate a gate so that Verus would be able to hide all of his Magical items that he doesn’t want found into a shadow realm?

Almost definitely, yeah. Arachne’s abilities are kinda weird by human standards (magical creatures don’t do stuff the same way as mages) but if there’s one thing I know she’s good at it’s making items, so I’d be willing to bet she could whip up a gate stone. Probably wouldn’t take her long either.

The problem would be finding a shadow realm to use. The whole point of the things is that they’re really really hard to get to if you don’t already have a way in, and if you do have a way in it’s probably because someone else showed it to you, which usually someone else is using the place already. I’ve been to a few shadow realms but I can’t think of any I’d want to use as a storage closet.

From: Trask

Dear Luna,

Do you have any background information on Cinder? Like where he came from? Or who he was an apprentice to? That sort of thing. Also does Alex ever mentioned him? I wouldn’t exactly call them friends, but they seem to have a mutual respect for each other. Has Alex ever met up with Cinder just to try and get to know him and see what makes him tick?

Thank you for any light you can shed on the fire frenzied Dark Mage.

Yours,
Trask

I don’t know much about Cinder, and I’m fine with keeping it that way. Honestly, he freaks me out more than a little bit. I mean, he’s not as horrifyingly sadistic as some of the Dark mages out there, but he’s still the kind of guy you absolutely do not want to risk pissing off, and it doesn’t help that the first time I met the guy he was trying to abduct me. Yes, we’ve technically been kinda-sorta-allies once or twice, but it was Alex who did the talking, not me, and I’ve always had the feeling that the more distance I keep from the guy the better. Right now I don’t think he remembers me and I’d be happy to keep it that way. Alex seems to have some kind of working relationship with the guy, but then it’s Alex. He has this weird ability to strike up civil conversations with the kind of people you’d normally run a mile to avoid.

As for where Cinder came from . . . don’t really know, though I’m pretty sure he was apprenticed to a Dark fire master at some point. The one definite thing I have heard about him is that he’s supposed to not like women very much – some sort of grudge. (And yes, I know, that doesn’t stop him hanging out with Deleo 24/7, but I have no idea WHAT’S going on between those two and given that she’s actually MORE homicidal than he is there’s no way in hell I’m getting close enough to find out.)

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Hidden Update

Posted on November 29, 2013 by Benedict

Was going to do an Encyclopaedia article on sound magic for today, but decided instead to do a brief update on the status of Alex Verus #5, aka Hidden.

This book’s taken a little longer to complete than the previous ones. Normally it takes me about 9 months-ish to write an Alex Verus novel, but Hidden‘s ended up taking 11-12, due to having been fairly extensively rewritten over the autumn. (Minor bit of trivia: this has been the first major rewrite I’ve done since Fated. Cursed, Taken, and Chosen all went from first draft to final release with only relatively minor changes each.) As a result, Alex Verus #5 probably isn’t going to be out until September-ish 2014, give or take a couple of months.

Still, the book’s written, and the good news is that it’s now past the rewrite stage and into the standard editorial track, meaning there shouldn’t be any more significant delays on the road to publication. I’m just in the middle of doing edits now, which’ll take a couple more weeks, after which I’ll be putting the manuscript away and focusing on the as-yet-untitled sixth book in the series.

Hidden is going to continue what Chosen started, in that it’ll be more of a ‘series’ book rather than a purely episodic one. I’m still going to try to make each new Alex Verus novel viable as a standalone story, but as the world gets bigger and past events become more significant, the drift is going to be in the direction of a long-term plot.

As for what’ll be in the book . . . I won’t go into too many details just yet, but Anne’s around a lot. 🙂 I’m pretty happy with the story after the changes, and while the rewrite might have taken a while, I do think the book’s much better as a result. Hopefully you will too!

Posted in News | 1 Comment

Ask Luna #21

Posted on November 22, 2013 by Benedict

From: Margery

I love the books, they really make me think and help me relax. So thank you. How old is Alex?

He turned 31 last month. He never does anything for his birthday, so we ended up throwing him a party. Well, ‘party’ is a bit of an overstatement, since there weren’t that many of us, but everyone had fun, or at least I think they did.

A lot of people seem to want to know how old Alex is. I wonder if there’s a reason they’re asking . . .

From: Steve

It’s probably been asked a godzillon times, but has there ever been any romantic interest in Alex on your part?

What are your personal thoughts on Alex since the events at his old master’s house? Do you still respect and look up to him or has your personal view of Alex changed?

I actually figured most of it out the year before. I already knew Alex used to be a Dark mage, and I’d started noticing that he kind of had a thing about adepts-to-apprentices of about my age – whenever someone youngish who seemed to be on their own came to him for help with some sort of magical problem, he’d always seem to end up helping them, even if there wasn’t any really good reason to do it. And with some of the hints he dropped . . . well, it wasn’t too hard to put the pieces together.

So when he finally told me the story it didn’t bother me that much. The truth wasn’t actually anywhere near as bad as some of the things I’d imagined – you hear some real horror stories about Dark mages, worse than that one by a long way. I guess if he did it now I’d have second thoughts, but it was so long ago I just kind of shrugged it off. He’s always treated me well, and to be honest that’s what I really care about. Maybe that makes me a bit self-centred, but that’s how it goes.

And as for your first question yes, I do get asked that a lot. You know the thing about answering stuff like that on the internet? It’s public.

From: Kildayen

Hey Luna,

Any chance of an Encyclopaedia update soon? I’d love to see an article on shapeshifting.

Went up last week, you can find it here.

From: Helena

Hi Luna,
I live in Australia, and I am looking for an Arachnoid fae, as I desperately need to confer re a woven vest I need made. Are there any willing to converse with humans here? (I have mediocre seer ability – what good is a split second? – and am not of convict stock). I have several Haplopelma lividum that are more than happy to vouch for me, but I do not know if the fae associate with their smaller kin.

Sincerely H.

I’m not that well up on Australian magical creatures, arachnid or otherwise – Arachne once told me about one called the Redback, but from the way she talked I’m not sure you’d want to meet it (and if you did getting a woven vest probably wouldn’t be your biggest problem). I do know about a couple of mages who are supposed to have good contacts with the magical creatures over there – send me a private message with your email, and I’ll see if I can put you in touch with them. No promises, though.

Posted in Ask Luna | 2 Comments